Events Gallery

The program engages clients in a creative healing process and provides them with opportunities to socialize, develop essential life skills and build a community for themselves. As part of encouraging the Art Expressions group to develop their artistic talents, the group participated in an annual bazaar which was held by St. Monica’s Catholic Women’s League.

Each Women’s Solution Dance Group session begins with the group dancing or a yoga session, which creates a, relaxing, friendly and energizing atmosphere that smoothly leads to the peer – group discussions. In addition, the Women’s Dance Group has been a regular performer at large Madison client events.

Our clients and guests were served a delicious buffet of traditional holiday turkey dinner and desserts. Throughout the event there was background guitar music played by Woody – a musician who was featured in the documentary film ‘Lowdown Tracks’; there was a performance by Madison’s Women’s Dance Group who then got everyone up on their feet for dancing. Over 35 special gift packages were won as door prizes by clients and each client received a large Holiday Gift Bag filled with warm clothes, and toiletries. Special thanks to our Social Recreation committee and volunteers for their hard work and dedication. A great time was had by all!

Our Bursary Program has been extremely successful in having a positive transformational impact on our clients’ lives. We are grateful that our corporate sponsor, Equitable Bank, has been generously funding the Equitable Bank- Bill Walker Memorial – Client Education Bursary Fund since 2012. Since the number of applications we receive every year have far exceeded Equitable’s donation – Madison staff and board members participate in this event to be able to provide grants to more clients.

Each exhibit was observed with program facilitators at hand to offer language assistance and all were provided with refreshments.Social and recreational activities in RISE are integral and on-going as they help encourage community integration and promote enjoyable socializations.

A special thanks to Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam for attending the event and her inspiring speech to our staff, board members, and clients. And as always a big thanks to all our volunteers.

The original founders of Madison Community Services, Ron Ballantyne & John Trainor, with Chris Higgins- Madison’s first Executive Director, were honored with special plaques. Of note, they shared that Madison was the first mental health supportive housing program in Toronto. In addition, there were other honorees who were gifted with artwork created by participants in Madison’s Art Expression Program for their support and involvement with Madison. The honorees were Equitable Bank, Roslyn Brown, MPP Cristina Martins, and Susan Fitzpatrick- CEO of TC LHIN.
There were performances and presentations throughout the night all to celebrate Madison Community Services journey through the years.

This year Madison raised a total of $13,250 which has been used to provide 13 additional grants to clients in 2017-2018.
The grants Madison offers through the Bursary Fund program help support our clients who are seeking to pursue learning from higher education programs as well as career and life skills training. The opportunity to take education programs – many of which can lead to employment – is transformational in their lives. Since the Equitable Bank – Bill Walker Memorial – Madison Client Education Bursary Funded began in December 2012 – 164 clients have received grants to support them in moving forward in their lives.

All proceeds from this fundraising event are used to support Madison’s many client events/programs which are not supported through government funding.

Madison would to thank our Gold Sponsors of the Madison Gala 2017: The Daniels Corporation and Lansdowne Property Management.

Green Ribbons are now the official symbol that mental illness is in fact an illness just like cancer (which uses pink ribbons) and there should be no stigma about this or any other illness.

On Wednesday May 3rd, Madison staff and clients participated in Mental Health Awareness Week 2017 by organizing a March in Toronto down University Avenue and ending at City Hall. We distributed green ribbons and temporary green tattoos to spread the word about Mental Health Awareness Week and support its #GETLOUD campaign.

At the event, Madison had the great privilege of being awarded a $20,000 grant through a presentation made from the Kristine Wilson, Associate Director, Community Involvement, and Symon Dwyer, Director, Government Affairs from Bell. Madison had applied to the Bell Let’s Talk Community Grant Fund to increase its capacity to serve Syrian refugees by bringing an additional Arabic speaking case manager onto Madison’s RISE program staff team. The RISE (Recovery during Immigration and Settlement) program supports both the settlement and mental health challenges of newcomers to Canada. Most of the RISE program clients come from war-torn countries and/or have experienced persecution and have trauma induced mental health issues.

As always the Holiday Party featured a full course Turkey dinner , entertainment by clients – the Women’s Dance Group and the Hispanic Group (which sang holiday songs in Spanish), and wonderful social interaction time between clients, staff, board members and special guests.

Special guests who attended the 2016 Holiday Party included Andrew Moor, CEO and Jody Sperling, VP Human Resources from Equitable Bank, Miriam Johnston, Manager Supportive Housing from the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, Carol Latimer, Director, Housing Policy Branch from the Ministry of Housing, Teressa Wu, Supervisor from Immigration, Refugges, Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Toronto Branch, and Sandra Cunning, Director, Quality Improvement from Addictions and Mental Health Toronto.

Since Andrew Moor, CEO and Jody Sperling, VP Human Resources who have made the annual decisions regarding End staff were invited to their head office so that the presentations to Equitable (quitable’s generous funding, were unable to attend our AGM this year, a number of clients awhich was done at the AGM) could also be made directly to them.

Navid, a recipient of a Client Bursary Program grant made a touching speech about how far he has come since coming to Canada as a refugee from Iran and how the Client Bursary Program grant helped him move forward in his life. He also presented a beautiful collage celebrating the milestone that as of October 2016, 100 clients had received grants from the bursary fund. Mariana and Flor, both clients in the Art Expression Program, also shared moving speeches about their hardships prior to coming to Canada and how liberating it is to express their feelings through art. Both of them gifted our sponsor with beautiful paintings created through the weekly Art Expressions Program group sessions.